


What Your Made Of

by ChangingbacktoBellamort500



Category: The Boys (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Child Death, Complicated Relationships, Domestic Violence, F/M, Implied Child Abuse, Love, We love a bad bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 23:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20518499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChangingbacktoBellamort500/pseuds/ChangingbacktoBellamort500
Summary: She was forged from lies, viciousness and shattered heart.





	What Your Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> I got the prompt Madelyn Stillwell is... and I just went with it.

Madelyn Stillwell is a liar. Lying is as easy to her as breathing.

It was a skill she learned from an early age. Ask where she grew up, and she'll say "We moved around a lot due to dad's work. From city to city living in a different condo every few months,".

A lie, she grew up in a small town until she ran away at sixteen. Everyone knew everyone, the only time strangers ever came there was when they needed to stop for the night before driving off to someone better.

Her mom worked as a maid in a cheap motel; the smell of strong bleach clung to her skin. Got pregnant in high school with Madelyn's brother, never went anywhere or did anything.

Her dad lost his job when she was three and never got another one. He'd rant about how he could have been someone if he hadn't got tied down with a wife and children. When she was ten, he ran off to Vegas with some bimbo. Her siblings cried; she didn't.

She spent six months lying to the neighbours that he had a job in a different town. When returned home six months later, broke and drunk she wished he hadn't.

The house they lived in had been her grandmother's, once sparkling clean and treated with love and pride became run down. When she thinks of that house, she thinks of dust, the smell of beer, piss, and meatloaf; her mom in the kitchen with a black eye.

Her dad sat in his chair in front of the tv with a beer in his hand, ignoring the screaming children around him; the man who prompted her to tell her first lie about how she broke her arm.

When she got on that bus at sixteen, the truth, became lost with every mile she travelled. The snotty, dirty and sticky hands siblings never existed; the maid mom became the life and soul of the party. Instead of bleach and bruises, expensive perfume clung to her skin. Her dad didn't sit in his filth in front of the TV, he was charming and important, well-loved and respected.

* * *

Ask why she still wears her wedding ring when her husband has been dead longer than they were married, Madelyn will say "He was the love of my life, I'll always wear it,".

The truth was when she married him, she was a seventeen year old stripper, and he was wealthy. He wasn't handsome or charming, he brought what he wanted, and what wanted was her. If he loved her, he didn't show it. She would say "I love you," in a voice sweeter than honey, but in truth, she felt nothing for him.

When he wrapped his car around a tree a year later, coked up to the eyeballs, it was no great loss.

Still, she played the part of young grieving widow well; using his money to claw her way into Vought. So she wore the ring as a reminder to how far she'd come. A reminder to never let herself become that low again.

* * *

Madelyn Stillwell has a vicious streak; this is someone that she wouldn't deny. Sweet but lethal that's how some described her. This trait reared its ugly head when she was six years old.

Jack Fletcher pushed her in the mud, the second hand, faded blue dress she wore cold, damp and muddy dress clinging to her underfed body while her cheeks burned red with embarrassment.

When they went back to class and the teacher turned her back; Madelyn rammed a pencil in his eye. It was an icy and vicious attack that the freckle-faced boy hadn't expected.

The adults had believed her when she said it was an accident, her big fat fake tears of remorse were never questioned by them, but the other children knew different. The older she got the more vicious she got, the more she learned to hide it or at least she made sure no one could prove it was her.

Rumours swirled around Vought of what she was capable of. The higher she rose the less people began to doubt they were false.

* * *

Madelyn Stillwell is heartless. She doesn't love anything; this isn't true, she can love.

At eight years old she had looked down at her sleeping baby brother, smaller than her other siblings had been, and her heart had swelled with love. Swore then she would always protect him and take care of him.

More often than not it was her who got up to him crying in the night. The only one who could make him smile.

Three years later when she had come home from school, hair in a ponytail and chipped nail varnish before she even opened the door her eleven-year-old self knew that only pain waited. Grief and anguish were in the air. Teddy had run out into the road, the car couldn't brake in time. Died before they arrived at the hospital. Her heart had shattered into a million tiny pieces.

* * *

When she was sixteen, she gave those pieces to someone who promised to put her heart back together again. He did and oh how Madelyn had loved him. It was a crazy intoxicating love that left her feeling high up in the clouds.

Gave him everything she had, for six months he was besotted with her then he wasn't. She never found out what changed. Perhaps, she came on too strong or maybe it was the opposite and she wasn't loving.

* * *

For years she doesn't give her heart anyone, keeps the pieces and nurses the broken shards.

Madelyn swears she'll never love anyone again but then Homelander comes along.

She doesn't want to love him, but slowly he claws his way into her heart. He needs her in a way no one ever has.

She likes that it does the other way around. Her ambitions don't scare him, nor her viciousness. It fascinates and excites him. They are both damaged from the early years of their life.


End file.
